School of Music

Roger Garrett

Contact Information

Assistant Professor of Music

B.M., M.M.; University of Michigan

Since the fall of 1988 Roger Garrett has been the full time clarinet professor at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, Illinois, where his duties include teaching the Clarinet Studio, Symphonic Winds, and teaching the Fundamentals of Conducting Classes. Other duties in the past have included running the Titan Band, teaching Marching Band Practicum, Chamber Music coaching, overseeing of Titan Band student conductors, and 14 years managing and advising the Illinois Wesleyan University Recording Studio.

Professor Garrett graduated With Distinction from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor with multiple degrees in Music Education with extensive study in the areas of clarinet performance and instrumental conducting. His primary teachers have included clarinetists David Shifrin (Cleveland Symphony, Director of Chamber Music Northwest and Lincoln Center), Herbert Blayman (Metropolitan Opera Orchestra), John Mohler (University of Michigan), John Bruce Yeh (Chicago Symphony), and Stan Stanford (Portland State University). He has also studied bass clarinet with Chicago Symphony Clarinetist J. Lawire Bloom and with Oliver Green of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Prior to accepting his current position at Illinois Wesleyan University, Mr. Garrett taught instrumental music and general music in the public schools of Longview, Washington, and Bozeman, Montana.

Mr. Garrett's full score edition of Gordon Jacob's Music for a Festival, an original work for alternating Band and Brass, was released by the distinguished music publisher, Boosey & Hawkes, Inc. in 1995. His sole edition of Three Marches for Harmoniemusik by Felix Mendelssohn was published by Ballerbach Music in 1999. Professor Garrett has guest conducted throughout the state of Illinois as well as in Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Colorado, and Sweden. His conducting teachers included H. Robert Reynolds, Elizabeth Green, Donald Schliecher, and Carl St. Clair.

Mr. Garrett began his clarinet performance career at the age of seventeen as a guest soloist with the Oregon Symphony Orchestra. He has since performed within the ranks of several professional orchestras, including the Oregon Symphony, the Ann Arbor Symphony and Ann Arbor Chamber Orchestra, the Illinois Symphony Orchestra and Illinois Chamber Orchestra, the Peoria Opera Orchestra, and he is currently Principal Clarinetist of the Peoria Symphony Orchestra in Peoria, Illinois.

A basset horn and low clarinet specialist, Mr. Garrett has performed basset horn trios with members of the Chicago Symphony Clarinet section. He has also performed chamber music with such ensembles as the Milwaukee Symphony wind section and the Colorado Music Festival Chamber Ensemble. His compact disc entitled Extended Clarinets!, released by NOViTAS Records in 2000, features Mr. Garrett performing chamber music with clarinetists of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and former members of the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra, Seattle Opera Orchestra, Oregon Symphony Orchestra, and Eugene Symphony Orchestra. This compact disc includes arrangements published by Mr. Garrett, such as Zwölfen Variations for Three Clarinet and Bass Clarinet (originally for piano) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as well as his setting for clarinet choir of St. Paul’s Suite for String Orchestra by Gustav Holst.

Mr. Garrett was honored by Boosey & Hawkes, distributors of Buffet Clarinets, by accepting a position with the prominent clarinet makers and distributors as a Buffet Performing Artist. Mr. Garrett performs exclusively on Buffet clarinets.